UK clinical
research update
June 2025 edition
Published June 25, 2025
Highlights
The following updates are from the dedicated partners who support the the development of a faster, more efficient and more innovative clinical research delivery system.
- On 16 June, The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced an unprecedented boost for clinical trials under the 10 Year Health Plan. The announcement included plans to turbocharge clinical trials, reducing the time it takes to set up a clinical trial in the UK to 150 days or less. The Health Research Authority, Chief Executive, Matthew Westmore, responded to this announcement saying, “Our work as part of the UKCRD programme to simplify the steps that researchers have to take, and remove duplication, will help reduce the time it takes to set up a clinical trial in the UK to 150 days.”
- Be Part of Research campaign, billed as the nation’s ‘biggest-ever recruitment drive for clinical trials’, kicked off urging millions of people across the UK to sign up to The National Institute for Health and Care Research’s (NIHR) register. Be Part of Research – NIHR’s flagship recruitment service – is a free, quick and simple way for people to register and take part in research with nearly every major health condition represented. The service has over 600,000 people registered so far and has recruited over 90,000 participants across 106 studies. Coverage for the campaign included BBC, This Morning, Times, Guardian, Mirror, Independent, Financial Times, LBC and more.
- The Spending Review (SR) 2025 was published on 11 June. On average, across the SR period, the NHS in England will receive 3.0% real term growth in day-to-day spending, equivalent to a £29 billion increase in annual resource budgets. The DHSC capital budget will also increase by £2.3 billion in real terms by 2029-30, compared to 2023-24. Alongside this, the government is also increasing Research & Development (R&D) funding to £22.6 billion per year by 2029-30, representing an above-inflation increase. This includes increased support for the UK’s exceptionally strong science base and is a welcomed increase for the clinical trials delivery ecosystem. The following UKCRD partners have shared their reflections on the review: NIHR, ABPI, and AMRC.
Study Set-Up Plan Update
This portion of the UK Clinical Research Update is dedicated to the UKCRD Study Set-Up Plan. In April 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on behalf of the four UK nations, published a policy statement announcing the new Study Set-Up Plan, to rapidly address the delays affecting clinical research through digitalisation and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
As per previous monthly updates, all of the deliverables for Phase 1 of the Study Set-Up Plan were delivered to time and target. Phase 2 is currently underway and will be completed at the end of June. Phase 2 activites will be reported on in next month’s UK Clinical Research Update.
If you want to know more about this work visit ukcrd.org.
The trust level data is now available on a monthly basis. You can find this month’s report on the UKCRD website. We encourage sites and sponsors to ensure data relating to their commercial contract work is up to date and we will be issuing further communications about this in due course.
News and Announcements
The following updates are from the dedicated partners who support the the development of a faster, more efficient and more innovative clinical research delivery system.
- Encouraging participation of a wide range of diverse communities in clinical research is essential to make sure that innovative medicines meet the needs of the people they are intended for – this is reiterated in a new report from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), ‘Achieving inclusivity in clinical research’. Read AMRC’s blog about the recent publication and the Health Research Authority’s (HRA) response to this report.
- Senior leaders from the MHRA have set out the agency’s refreshed strategic direction at DIA Global in Washington DC, 17 June 2025. With a patient-first approach, the MHRA emphasised that they ‘can be relied on to apply our expertise quickly, innovatively and in collaboration with our rich network of partners across the UK healthcare system as well as globally.’
- NIHR published a news article outlining how England continues to recruit first participants in global life sciences trials. The article was published on #Red4Research, a day to celebrate all those who deliver and take part in research. In the article, Nick Lemoine, Strategic Development Director of the NIHR Research Delivery Network, said, “All of this happens because people give up their time to volunteer for research and because of the hard work of our staff and researchers in our delivery organisations.”
- With an NIHR Senior Research Fellowship award, Professor Richard Cookson has developed ways to manage health inequalities. His work has supported the NHS in identifying local areas of social inequality. Read more about these efforts here in his blog.
- NIHR’s study support have helped a team to revise their eligibility criteria in order to meet recruitment targets and to achieve a more representative group of patients – learn how.
- NIHR-supported researchers developed mechanisms to support industry to better evaluate medical devices. This saves costs compared to the usual study evaluations conducted in clinical trials units. This research was carried out by researchers at the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre (HRC) in Devices, Digital and Robotics, formerly the NIHR Trauma Management Medtech and In vitro Diagnostics Co-operative.
- NIHR will be hosting ‘Our support offer for the life sciences industry’ webinar on the 21 July at 14:00 BST. In this webinar NIHR experts will guide you through the range of NIHR tools, services and support for the life science industry.
UK Clinical Research Delivery Performance Indicators Report
The UK Clinical Research Delivery Performance Indicators Report, an evolution of the Research Status Report, incorporates a collection of system-wide UK metrics that monitor progress towards developing a faster, more efficient and more innovative clinical research delivery system.
The indicators were developed in collaboration with the NHS, industry and medical research charities. Using data collected by the NIHR and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the monthly report is produced by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on behalf of the UK clinical research system. The report provides transparent updates on progress towards our goals over time.
The following is a snapshot of the full UK Clinical Research Delivery Performance Indicators Report. Click here to read the full report.
| UK Performance Indicator | Target | Timeline for delivery | Trend | Baseline² | May 2025 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All³ | Proportion of studies receiving combined regulatory review achieved within 60 days | 99% | Maintain target | 🟢 | 100% | 100% |
| 2 | C⁴ | Proportion of studies open to recruitment within 60 days of HRA approval letter or equivalent process used by the Devolved Administrations | 90% | November 2024 | 🔴 | 39% | 10%⁵ |
| 3 | C | Proportion of studies recruiting first participant within 30 days of sites opening to recruitment | 90% | November 2024 | 🔴 | 25% | 0%⁵ |
| 4 | C | Proportion of NHS trusts in England that accept the NCVR process for late-phase studies | 100% | December 2023 | 🟢 | 79% | 100% |
| 5 | All | Proportion of open studies on track, delivering to time and target | 80% | June 2023 | 🟢 | 80% | 83%⁶ |
| 6 | All | Recruitment to studies is maintained compared to the pre-pandemic baseline (61,000)⁷ ⁸ | 70,000 or more per month⁹ | Ongoing | 🟢 | 70,000 | 88,178⁹ |
| 7 | C | Recruitment to all commercial studies to be monitored in support of the ambition to double and double again from the pre-pandemic baseline of 3,200⁷ ⁸ | Reported per month⁹ | Ongoing | 🟡 | 3,200 | 5,830⁹ |
2 Some measures are new and therefore the baseline was established in different months.
3 All indicates a measure that applies to all studies.
4 ‘C’ indicates that it applies to commercial contract studies only.
5 There is a latency or lag between activity and data being recorded in the central system. This means that the data for these indicators for most recent months is often incomplete and low. The data are updated retrospectively, taking six months or more for the datasets to be fully consolidated.
6 Based on recruitment in England and England target.
7 Average per month in England only from 2015 to 2020.
8 Data on trial phase to be provided subsequent to implementation of digital infrastructure.
9 Rolling average across the previous 12 months.
If you would like to submit an update to this monthly publication, please email UKCRDprogramme@dhsc.gov.uk